Wait, am I recording? You are listening to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. All right, let's mango. Hello and welcome to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. My name is Lindsay, hello, and I have my PhD in art history, which always seems important to say up front because it establishes my qualifications. First and foremost, happy St. Patrick's Day. Maybe plus one day. I don't know if I'll actually get this out on March 17th, but that is the plan. Now I would say that I waited to post this until St. Patrick's Day, but that would be a lie. I have had a full week of student meetings, and after six to eight hours of student meetings a day, my voice is not always up to recording. Especially not for an episode that turned out to be an hour and a half long. You've been warned. That is what you get when you try to do a podcast episode about the world's most famous book that just happens to contain 680 pages. But I persevered. But anyway, happy St. Patrick's Day. I hope you enjoy the episode, and I thank you very much for listening. Okay, back to the recording. Thank you for joining me for episode 35. Episode 35 is the fraternal twin of episode 34, both of which cover the Book of Kells. Episode 34 covers the history of the book, so everything going on outside of its pages, whereas this episode, episode 35, is going to cover the book itself. You also might find mini sopful as it tells you everything you need to know about how illuminated manuscripts like the Book of Kells were made, from calf to cover. Yes, I said calf. Go listen to minisode three. But you're here now in episode 35, at the part where I tell you stuff about one of the most famous manuscripts in the world and the multitudes it contains. The Book of Kells, part two. Cover to cover and page to page. For those of you tuning in to part two first, or for those of you who don't even plan on listening to part one, fair enough, allow me to give you the one-minute overview of the Book of Kells and its history. The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript, which means it is a handwritten book with images. You'll hear all about that in this episode, and you can learn more about the art form of the illuminated manuscript in Mini Sode 3, titled Illuminated Manuscripts and Their Making. As I go into in part one, the Book of Kells has uncertain origins. The dominant theory, though, is that the book was made around the year 800 on an island off the coast of Scotland known as Iona. About 250 years earlier, an Irish saint named Colum Kill established a monastery on that island. That island soon became the headquarters of Christian missionary efforts in Scotland. It was also home to an incredible scriptorium, or manuscript-making facility. That monastery had to be more or less abandoned in the early 800s when Vikings started to wreak major havoc, causing a mass exodus of monks from Iona to Ireland, where they established a sister monastery in the town of Kells. That is the one-minute summary of the book's uncertain early history. For more, see episode 34, which goes into far greater detail and covers how the manuscript made its way from Kells to Trinity College in Dublin, where the book has resided since the 17th century. This episode concerns the book itself. Let's start with some stats. The book of Kells is approximately 13 by 11 inches, so a little bit bigger than your average piece of printing paper. At one point, though, those pages were much larger, but some nut job in the 1800s trimmed them down, which included cutting off some of their illuminations. Absolute maniac. The book weighs in, or should I say numbers in, at 340 folios, or individual leaves of parchment. These folios are numbered not page to page, but rather by folio, with the letters R and V used to determine front or back. For more, see the Mini Sonal Illuminated Manuscripts. At one point, the book probably had at least a dozen extra folios, though it's hard to say for certain just how many are missing. As with most manuscripts, the Book of Kell's pages are made of vellum, a type of parchment made from the skin of baby cows. And for a book of this size and length, it's estimated that it took between 170 to 200 calves to supply the amount of skin needed to make its pages. The Book of Kells is what's known as a gospel book. Now there's a couple things added in, but we'll get to that. For those of you unfamiliar with, or maybe a little rusty, on the inner workings of Christianity and its various texts, let me give you a little introduction/slash refresher. The four gospels are four written accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, the primary figure in the Christian faith, apart from, you know, God. And even then, those two are kind of the same, but also not. It's a little complicated. The history of the Gospels is also complicated, once you know it. But the common narrative is that these four stories of Christ's life were written by four of Christ's apostles or followers Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Of those four, Matthew and John were apostles or very close followers who knew Christ personally, while Luke and Mark were big fans, but were not a part of his immediate circle. These four dudes are referred to as the evangelists, because they were the first major evangelizers or messengers who sought to tell people about and convert them to the Christian faith by telling them the story of Christ. You most often hear about the Gospels with regards to Bibles, because the Gospels are the meat and potatoes of the New Testament, aka Part 2 of the Christian Bible. But Bibles are long, and when you're making handwritten, hand-illustrated books out of baby calves, that gets a little difficult and requires a lot of resources. Now I'm not saying it never happened, but it was more common to find books containing parts of the Bible, like the Book of Kells. As with most religious manuscripts of the time, the Book of Kells is written in Latin and features a script known as Insular Maguscule. Now that sounds super fancy, but it's not. A script is kind of like the handwritten version of a computer font, which is a description that will make some people roll over in their graves, but hey, that's more or less what it is, and if you don't like it, you don't like it. Now to be clear, a script is different than handwriting. Everyone's handwriting is different. But people like scribes and calligraphers are trained how to adapt their writing so they can write in these different scripts. You can see examples of that on any number of TikTok or Instagram calligraphy accounts, which I find very soothing. Insular Maguscule is to medieval Ireland what Comic Sands was to my sixth grade papers. It was the basic go-to script of its day. The word insular comes from the Latin word for island, and refers to the fact that this script originated in Ireland, which, if you haven't looked at a map in a while, is in itself an island. Whereas the word maguscule refers to the characteristics of the letters themselves. Now, full disclosure, I did not read that far into this because it was so boring. But the gist of it is that Insular Maguscule is essentially a more simplified, readable version of an ancient Roman script. Though to me it still kind of looks like the Elven script that appears on the one ring in the Lord of the Rings movies. But as far as medieval calligraphy goes, it's pretty reader-friendly. I'll give it that. What's even more friendly though are the images in the book, the illuminations. Almost every single page in the Book of Kells has some kind of flourish, from simple tiny flower doodles to entire pages filled with the most intricate patterns you've ever seen. I'm gonna make a big statement right now, which is that the Book of Kells is to Ireland what the Sistine Chapel is to Rome, technically the Vatican. It's the kind of thing that you can spend years looking at and still see new things or old things in a new way every time you turn its pages. That is, if they allowed you to touch it, which they don't. If you tried that, they'd probably break your fingers. And that would be bad because fingers are as important today as they were 1500 years ago, when scribes and illuminators joined forces to produce this incredible book. And yes, I say scribes and illuminators because one man alone could not have made this book. A woman, maybe, because we're awesome. But the Book of Kells was undoubtedly a group effort. It is believed that at least four scribes worked on the text, while at least three illuminators contributed to the images. Now it's a lot easier to see the differences in the illuminations than it is in the text, because the scribes were using a standardized script that they were all trained in. But experts, called paleographers, can still look at this stuff and pick out tiny details that differentiate one hand from another. Now, poisonly, my toes don't tingle when studying the minute details of vowel ascenders or ink distribution. So we're just gonna skip over that. You're welcome. I am instead going to devote most of the rest of the podcast episode to talking about the illuminations, which are undoubtedly the star of this show. Before talking specifics about the images, I first want to establish why the Book of Kells as a whole is so important and beloved. And that means taking a step back to talk about the cultural and artistic climate in which the book was made, broadly speaking, because again, we don't really know that much specifically about its origins. There are a lot of reasons why the Book of Kells is famous, many of them related to the supreme mastery of craft and skill and artistry on display in the book. Art historically speaking, though, the book is held up as a supreme example of the fusion between Christian imagery and symbolism and the artistic traditions of pre-Christian civilizations in this area, with this area referring to basically anything in the British Isles. Before the spread of Christianity, Ireland and Scotland were dominated by the Celts, which is a rather broad term to describe a variety of people inhabiting this area. The Celts had a very rich artistic tradition, particularly in the realm of the so-called applied arts. So not just art for art's sake, but art that is functional or practical in some way. Think jewelry, sword handles, utensils, belt buckles, all of that kind of stuff would be considered applied arts. The Celts were especially talented with metalwork and stonework. And while there is some Celtic figural arts, or you know, depictions of people, the Celts excelled in non-figural art, which is to say things like geometric patterns and abstract designs. The most famous of those designs are Celtic knots and interlacing, which are designs that look as if a string or strings have been arranged and braided into a very complicated and seemingly endless pattern. The Celts were doing this kind of stuff for hundreds of years before anyone came a colon trying to sell Christianity door to door, or you know, hut to hut. Eventually, though, the Christians did come a colon in the form of individuals like Saint Patrick in the 5th century, and later Saint Columba or Column Kill in the 6th. Little reminder, Column Kill was the founder of the monastery on Iona where the Book of Kells was probably made. He also had connections to the monastery at Kells. If there was one thing that Christian missionary efforts were very, very good at doing, it was co-opting the traditional art forms and material culture of the people they were trying to convert to what was to them a very foreign religion. Some might even say the missionaries weaponized that visual culture, which really depends on your perspective. But ultimately, it was a pretty damn good marketing strategy, because it made this new, very strange religion more accessible to the local people. Over time, as in over the course of centuries, these once disparate traditions fused together and became a new tradition that developed unto itself. In Ireland, the result was a 150-year period between 700 and 850-ish, that is now considered the golden age of Irish art. To be clear, there were still exchanges happening between these Christian missionaries and other Christian centers in Europe, but that was primarily happening through the circulation of books and people. And it's not like you can fit a Byzantine cathedral or large painting into your carry-on luggage. As a result, as the centuries went on, the approach to Christian imagery, somewhere like in Ireland or Scotland, grew increasingly distinct from the imagery and styles developing in other Christian centres, in places like present-day Turkey, Italy, Greece, you name it. Yes, Irish and Scottish art did share some similarities with the arts of those places, but essentially it became its own thing. In Ireland and Scotland, that meant that the non-figural, pattern-based traditions of the Celts continued to flourish long after Christians had set up shop, while figural art remained far more simplistic. It's important to remember though that in the 700s and 800s, making figures look quote-unquote realistic just wasn't really a thing anywhere in Christian Europe. The emphasis was instead on a figure's divinity, not their physical humanity. Believe you me, we'll be seeing a lot of that as we continue to talk. This is all a long-winded way of saying that the Book of Kells is celebrated as the supreme example of that Celtic Christian fusion in medieval art. The other thing for which the book is famous is, of course, the sheer number and spectacularity, not a word, but whatever, of the illuminations that appear within its pages. There is some kind of artistic flourish on almost every one of the Book of Kells's 340 folios. The majority of those folios have what we call incidental illuminations, from little flowers in the margins to ornamented capital letters. Just because they're small, though, does not take away from the fact that these illuminations are delightful. Only two folios in the entire book lack some kind of illumination. Those are the backs or versos of folios 29 and 301. But, but, those pages were very clearly supposed to have illuminations. So on the verso of 29, for example, you can see a faint sketch of an elaborate border that just never got made. On the verso of 301, there is one letter that appears to have a little flourish that never got painted in. If you're curious, it's the first letter of line 11. Images will be on the website. Now that begs the question, is the Book of Kells unfinished? That's a hard question to answer. Most people would say yes, but to me it looks pretty darn finished despite some little whoopsies. Speaking of whoopsies, it's worth noting that the Book of Kells is positively riddled with errors. Now mistakes happen, we all know that, and anyone hand copying a book is bound to make the occasional boo-boo. A lot of these errors were small, and they were taken care of by just scraping away the top layer of vellum and writing over it. But some aren't so small. For example, one scribe accidentally copied the same page twice. So both sides of folio 219 say exactly the same thing. Then you've got folio 316, where you can see that a scribe corrected something by using the medieval equivalent of whiteout. They used an X-Acto knife, or you know, the medieval equivalent to it, to cut out a square of the parchment and sewed in a new patch and just carried on with business. My favorite mistake, though, is on the verso of folio 146. On that folio, the scribe realized he'd missed a line after finishing the page, so he wrote the missing text in teeny tiny little letters at the bottom of the page and then put a cross in the main text to indicate where it was supposed to go. I love stuff like that. I really do. I'm not being snarky, because it serves as an important reminder that this world-famous book was made by imperfect humans just like us. Now let's talk a little bit about materials. Compared to the 200 baby cows that were used to make its pages, the materials sourced to make the book's ink and paint aren't so horrifying. The paint and ink featured in the book were primarily made using materials local to the British Isles. From 2004 to 2006, a technique known as micro-raman specta what is it? Micro micro-ramin spectroscopy was used to identify those materials. The findings were somewhat surprising. For example, it had always been assumed that the scribes and illuminators had made blue paint and ink from lapis lagelly, a blue stone that was extremely expensive. But this analysis showed that the blue wasn't lapis lagelly at all. It was made from the indigo plant, sometimes called woad, which is a type of flowering plant that can be used to produce rich blue dyes. Other types of pigments used in the book include gypsum, red lead, iron gall, and carbon black. Finally, the bright yellow that you see throughout the text is made from orpament, a highly toxic mineral that, despite literally being made of arsenic, was very popular in both Europe and China around this time. The monks on Iona probably would have had to import orpament from somewhere in continental Europe like Italy. That tells us that this small island on the western coast of Scotland was much better connected to the quote-unquote outside world that one might assume, and likely maintained trade contact with other Mediterranean centers. Otherwise, how would they have gotten the orpament? Which, for all the toxicity of its substance, is an absolutely delightful word orpament. While the Book of Kells is a gospel book containing, you know, words, there is absolutely no doubt that the Illuminations are the clear star of this show. I can Counted 30 pages with major illuminations that either take up the whole page or a good part of the page. These full page or even semi-full page illuminations can be roughly grouped into four categories: abstract designs involving letters, full page illustrations of gospel events, quote unquote portraits of the evangelists and their symbols, and lastly, architectural stuff. Those are my categories. They're far from perfect, but that's the gist. Most scholars agree that the Book of Kells features the work of at least two, if not three, different illuminators. One of those scholars, the pioneering figure of Francois Henry, suggested nicknames for what she believed to be three separate individuals. First, you have the illustrator, then you have the portrait painter, and lastly, the goldsmith. It's worth noting, though, that this kind of work, these kind of illuminations, were highly collaborative, and it's likely that more hands were involved, particularly with some of the smaller incidental illuminations, but in the bigger ones as well. I'm not going to talk about every one of the 30 major illuminations. We'd be here for days. But I will take you on a little gander through the book, starting with the first eight folios, which are essentially front matter before the book gets real text heavy. To start, I want to spend a little time talking about a page that I don't think gets much love, which is the very first page of the Book of Kells. Now, I'll admit, when I first digitally opened the book, I was a little disappointed because before working on these episodes, I really only knew the highlights from the book. And unfortunately, comparison is The Thief of Joy. I became much more interested in this page when I realized just how much it tells us about the Book of Kells as a physical object. Now, first things first, part of the reason why this page is so initially underwhelming is due to its physical condition. At some point, this illumination and the corresponding illumination on the other side was at some point cut out of its original folio and stitched into a new leaf of vellum. You can very clearly see the stitches around the border and the night and day difference between the old vellum and the new vellum. Now I can't say why this might have happened. It might have been the result of nefarious shenanigans, or it may have been done to save the illumination as an act of conservation. My instinct is that it's the second, because it's clear that the original page was in some trouble. Now I don't know that it was specifically done for conservation, it's just what I assume. The full page illumination, at least what we still have of it, is a two-columned table, so a rectangle with a line down its center, but it's a very fancy rectangle, filled with all kinds of decoration. Celtic knots, interlacing patterns, it's very fancy. In the left column of the table, there is a list of Hebrew names, and on the right are the symbols of the evangelists or gospel writers. Those symbols appear constantly in the book: an angel for Matthew, an ox for Luke, a lion for Mark, and an eagle for John. First, what's up with this list of Hebrew names? Lists of Hebrew names often accompanied gospel books, because the person who translated the Bible from Hebrew to Latin, Saint Jerome, was worried that the meanings behind these names would get lost in translation, and he wanted to preserve those meanings. For example, the first name on the list is Sadak, and right below that you see the Latin word eustificatus, which is Latin for justified. Ergo, therefore, Sadak in Hebrew means justified. It's like the St. Jerome version of babynames.com. Looking closely at the book of Kells, or really not even that closely, just looking at it, you can see that the names in this column are alphabetized from S to Z, confirming that this was not always the first page of the book. In fact, there were probably several pages before this one. The book is also missing a good chunk of its final pages. Now, if I had to point to a moment in time where it likely lost these pages, I would point to the year 1007, when Thieves snuck into the Abbey of Kells, ripped off the book's bejeweled cover, probably taking a few pages with it, and then abandoned the book beneath a pile of sod. For more on that, see episode 34. That would explain why this page is in such bad shape, because if that is the case, it means that this page was in direct contact with dirt for months. I also at one point read something about the possibility that this page at some point got smushed or crumpled. Now, any of us who have carried around books in backpacks know that that kind of stuff happens. Whatever the reason for its dismal state of preservation, the side of the table featuring the Hebrew names is pretty dang clear. The opposite side of the page with the evangelists' symbols is in much poorer condition. Matthew's Angel is pretty clear, Mark's line and John's Eagle are iffy, and Luke's ops is basically illegible. This is a common conundrum in the Book of Kells. The illumination heavy pages show much heavier wear and tear than those featuring text. It's yet another indication that the illuminations were really the star of the show. For a time, this book was even believed to be the relic of Saint Columba. Not only did that invite something like touch, but it also invited gestures like kissing, which sounds weird now, but it wasn't weird to them then. Ironically, it's because of that reverence that these pages are in such bad shape. I feel like there's a metaphor lurking in there somewhere. But don't you worry, this page is just a small morsel of what the rest of the book has in store, which starts to become clearer in the next section of the book, which is known as the canon tables. Canon tables were commonly featured in gospel books as a way to compare and contrast content across the four gospels, which essentially tell the same story in different ways. Canon tables exist to provide guidance and interpretation for readers as they navigate these four texts. The canon tables in the Book of Kells, however, are functionally useless. Not only is the writing super cramped, someone, not pointing fingers, but someone left out chapter and verse numbers that usually accompany each entry into the tables. It's like providing citations in a paper without providing page numbers. No no, no, no, no. Bad. Luckily though, the canon tables are pretty to look at, at least the first handful of them. For the most part, each of the canon tables presents the table in question as if it were an architectural structure, namely an archway with four columns holding it up. That is what provides the registers into which the scribes mapped out the gospels. This architecture, though, isn't like anything I have ever seen, and it probably wasn't architecture that the monks who made this had ever seen. It's like if someone approached a monk who had spent his entire life on a Scottish island, sat him down, and described in minute detail a Byzantine cathedral, then gave him a bunch of colors and some paper and told him to recreate it on the page. And you know what? That's probably not that far off from what actually happened. The architectural structure of the tables is pretty run-of-the-mill. It's some variation on an archway with some columns. But those structures are jam-freaking packed with ornamentation, from Celtic interlaces to random geometric designs, medallions, like it's chaka block full of stuff. At the top of each archway, the arch archie part, are the symbols of the evangelists. Sometimes there's only three, other times there are four. It depends. So on Folio 3R, for example, you'll see that there are only three columns in the table. I'm not really sure why, and I didn't look into it that much, but presumably they're only comparing events across three of the four Gospels. Fittingly, there's only three symbols that occupy the archway: an angel, a lion, and an ox. That indicates that the three Gospels under discussion are the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of Luke. Also, the lion is derpy as heck. It has this long tongue hanging out like one of those toothless dogs who always wins the ugliest dog award, and then its mane kind of looks like it's made of feathers. Which makes me wonder. Had these Scottish-Irish dudes ever actually seen a lion? I'm guessing no. This is just one instance in the book where people were probably drawing things based exclusively on verbal communication and or previous examples rather than the quote-unquote real thing. Even so, this lion on 3R looks particularly hmm. Spitting image. Probably literally, because his tongue is like three feet long. All of a sudden, though, on the Verso of Folio 5, the gorgeous architectural framework that is absolutely dripping in decoration ends. But what doesn't end are the canon tables. Those keep going. For whatever reason, someone here decided to abandon the architectural ship in favor of a very simple composition of red and yellow lines. It looks kind of like a game board. There are also suddenly five columns, and I have absolutely no idea why. The final two pages of the canon tables are done in this overly simplified style. It is an absolutely night and day difference from one page to the next. That inspires the question: why? Why do something for nine consecutive pages and then basically give up? There are a few different theories for why this sudden switch exists. One is that there must have been some kind of significant interruption during the process of the book's creation. Those of you who listened to part one will know that some people believe the manuscript was started in one place, Iona, and finished in another, Kells. This switcheroo in the canon tables is probably the best physical indication that we have that this might be true. Because clearly something happened, whether that was a Viking attack that required the monks to flee and finish the book elsewhere, probably somewhere they didn't have the same resources, or maybe a less talented illuminator took over, or there was the need to finish something quickly. Something clearly happened, but to this day it remains one of the many mysteries of the Book of Kells. The canon tables end on the recto of Folio 6, and then another something interesting happens. In the 11th and 12th centuries, someone starts writing in Old Irish about land transactions happening in County Meath, which is the county where Kells is located. If you want more on this, you can listen to part one. But essentially the reason I bring it up is because this writing in Old Irish is the earliest indication we have for certain that not only was the Book of Kells in Kells at this time, but that it existed at all. Because remember, we don't actually know when this book was made. Now, are we pretty dang certain it was made hundreds of years before this? Yes. But as historians, we do like to have proof to point to to say, you know, this is when the book was in Kells, and we know that it existed because it was being used. That's no small potatoes. After the Canon Tables and the later edition of the Land Transactions, comes what is perhaps my favorite page in the entire manuscript, which is the Verso of Folio 7. That page features a full-page illumination of the Madonna and Child surrounded by angels. When you look at this, especially in comparison to the illuminations we'll talk about in a hot second, you'll think, Lindsay, you have gone batty. Because this image of the Madonna and Child is undoubtedly one of the least accomplished illuminations in the entire book. There is a very beautiful border surrounding the Madonna and Child, but uh the figures, mmm, they're not so beautiful. And before you get your pitchforks out and try to, you know, pitchfork me, I am not alone in thinking this. In fact, there seems to be a consensus about this across uh some history. One of the book's earliest scholars, uh, Professor J. O. Westwood, described the figures as puerile, which means amateur-ish or even childish. On this side of history, art historian Christopher de Homel took it one step further. And I laughed out loud when I read his description of this image. He calls the figures, quote unquote, dreadfully ugly, and describes the Madonna as having, quote unquote, pendulous breasts. And you know what? He's not wrong. Those babies would be flappin' in the wind alongside her nostrils, which are also very flappy looking. Now, unfortunately, the Christ child isn't much better, and in fact, might be a bit worse. He looks like a ventriloquist dummy who has two left feet. And I mean that literally. If you look at his feet, they are both left feet. And in a weird, ironic mirror of that, you look at the Madonna's feet, and she's got two right feet. Two left feet on the baby, two right feet on the mama. This is a good place to stress that beauty and importance, or beauty and significance, are not mutually exclusive. This illumination of the Madonna and Child is incredibly important, because it is, allegedly, the oldest surviving depiction of the Madonna and Child in a European manuscript. It is also one of the most famous images in all of Ireland. Once again, according to Christopher de Homel, it's not unusual to find reproductions of this image in pubs throughout the country. People love it. And I also love it. I just happen to think it's delightfully ugly. I'm sure many people have said the same thing about me. There are possible explanations for this illumination's immense let's say uniqueness. It's immense uniqueness. One is that it might be based on a pre-existing image that was really important, maybe even miraculous. There are examples of these miraculous images all over Europe, and I'm sure elsewhere, but I'm most familiar with Europe, that are just straight up ugly, but at some point they like cried blood or cured cholera or did something else miraculous, and people cannot get enough of them. And then artists just continue to kind of remake those images again and again and again across all kinds of media, as if this miraculousness was somehow transferable from image to image. So that might be one thing that's happening here. On the other hand, it's also seemingly possible, just from what these figures look like, that the monk who painted this had never seen a human woman or a human child. That would actually explain a great deal. Because what? What is this? And yes, I know that I said it earlier that the figures in this book are more about divinity than physical realism. But that is no excuse to render boobs that badly. I mean, truly, they're awful. But that's okay, because Michelangelo, one of the greatest artists of all times, also really struggled with boobs. And he did just fine for himself. I will say that the charming awkwardness of the Madonna in Child is thrown into greater, more, more terrible relief, due to the fact that the page directly next to it has one of the most intricate illuminations in the book. That page marks the beginning of a new section in the book, the one known as the Brevis Causi and the Argumenta, which are basically the Sparknot's version of each gospel, followed by a short biography of the evangelist who wrote it. These illuminations that appear in the Brevis Causi are different from the types that we've already talked about. Instead of illustrating something or creating an architectural form, these illuminations celebrate the text itself by taking the opening words of a section and drenching them in ornamentation, to the point where it's hard to discern what the words actually say. The first page of the Brevis Cowsi is the most elaborate example of this in the book so far. It's also the only full-page illumination in this particular section, which is about 20 folios long. Now, technically, this page is dedicated to the opening words of the Gospel of Matthew, or, you know, rather its summary. But this full-page illumination is not indicative of the fact that Matthew's Gospel is somehow more important than the other three. Instead, it stands to showcase a transition from the canon tables to the brevis causi. Then throughout this section, you'll find many versions of this elaborate text-based illumination, which in and of themselves indicate a transition in the text, typically from gospel summary to evangelist biography, and then back to another gospel summary. The illuminators approached this text-based imagery in different ways throughout the book. The first page of the Brevis Cowsi take the opening words of the summary of Matthew, make them big and bold, and then insert them into registers within an elaborate frame before going in and ensuring that every millimeter of space around those letters is filled with some kind of design. This might be a weird comparison, but the interplay between the letters and the designs in this particular illumination reminds me of those pictures that you see of abandoned ancient temples in places like Cambodia, where the jungle is slowly but surely reclaiming those structures as their own. Just like those temples, these letters and the words that they form are being overtaken by the ornamentation, thereby becoming ornamentation in and of themselves. Before moving on, I also wanted to point out the few human figures throughout the Illumination, which just look ridiculous. One sits above one of the text registers and looks out at the reader while holding a book. Now I have no time to look at the book that he's offering me because, quite frankly, I'm too distracted by his crossed legs, which look like some thick noodles. Then again, I suppose that thick noodle legs are preferable to pendulous breasts, but you know, to each their own. There's another little dude squatting in the register on the right hand side of the page, but my personal favorite is at the top of the folio, where you'll see a weird decorative face whose tongue and ponytail transform into snake like extensions that tie together into a Celtic knot. Yes, his tongue and his ponytail join forces. His bangs also join the party by slithering out and wrapping themselves into another elaborate knot, one that a disembodied arm reaches out to grab. It's very, very weird. Once upon a time, these small details probably made sense to the people consuming this text. Yes, even the ponytail that's French kissing with the tongue. But whatever those meanings were, they have since been lost to time. While that might be lost to us, we can still enjoy the rest of the illumination, which is absolutely jam-packed with ornamentation, from about 15 kinds of highly elaborate interlacing to some of the biggest, boldest colors that appear throughout the manuscript. There are also some excellent examples of the way the illuminators employed anthropomorphic Celtic knots throughout the design, meaning that they incorporated animal characteristics into these knots. In the upper left corner, for example, you'll see some sort of peacock-looking things whose bodies have been transformed into the equivalent of a Celtic pretzel. And throughout the rest of the illumination, you'll see other animal heads capping off the ends of knots and interlace, which is something that appears throughout many of the pages to come. If major illuminations represent a transition point or a major event happening in the text, you know something really, really big is happening when there are multiple full-page illuminations in a row. Case in point, folios 27, 28, and 29. This marks the spot where the front matter of the book, the Gospel adjacent stuff, transitions into the Gospels themselves, starting with the Gospel of Matthew. At one point in time, each of the Gospels got their own trinity of illuminations, though today only the Gospels of Matthew and John retain all three. These illuminations progress in a set order. First, you have an image featuring the evangelists' symbols, that is followed by a quote-unquote portrait of the Gospels writer. Lastly, the third image features a totally abstract, pattern-licious full-page illumination that takes the first words of the gospel and positively suffocates them in decoration. Rather than talk about these one at a time, I want to instead cover them group by group, focusing primarily on the portraits and the abstract letter-based art. The symbols of the evangelists are cool, but um that would take forever, and this is already getting long. Now, as I said, only two evangelist portraits remain in the book. Or at least we think there's only two, but more on that in a little bit. Those are the portraits of Matthew on the verso of 27 and of John on the verso of 291. These are undoubtedly the two most celebrated figural illuminations in the book. Not that they have a lot of competition, but even so, they're very cool. The portraits each go by a very similar schema. There is an extreme frontality to these figures, who look out from their pages with these huge almond eyes, medusa-like hair, which is to say almost snakelike, and tidy beards. Both of them also hold up books, presumably their Gospels, which is very meta, because the pages that follow are those Gospels. Inception, Book of Kells style. Of these two portraits, the portrait of John tends to get more praise. There are a few reasons for that, but first among them is the fact that the portrait of John is slightly more naturalistic than that of Matthew, though I am using the word naturalistic very loosely. None of this is helped by the fact that the figure of Matthew looks downright sinister. I'm going to have to blame that one on whoever made the executive decision to paint Matthew's irises pink. Yeah, they painted his irises pink. I'm kind of hoping that that's due to pigment degradation or pigments changing color over time, but still iffy. Also, speaking of his eyes, one of his pupils is mysteriously missing, which goes a long way to making him look like an 8th-century Bond villain. The two areas where that quote-unquote naturalism, again, using that term very loosely, is in John's pose and his hands. For one, you can actually tell that John is sitting. Yeah, he may be squatting like a frog, but the point stands. In the case of Matthew's portrait, the evangelist looks as if he's standing. The fact that he is, in fact, sitting is implied only by the presence of the throne behind him. John's hands are also much more sophisticated than the hand we see of Matthew's, which is positively Voldemortian, even Grinch-like, with these long spindly fingers. Contrast that with those of John, one of which holds a book while the other holds a staff. I was particularly impressed by the hand holding the staff, because the artist made an effort to show the fingers wrapping around the handle. In other words, he doesn't have Barbie hands where holding is simply implied. There's also a point to be made about how these figures of the evangelists interact with the ornamentation surrounding them. In the case of the portrait of Matthew, he is almost being consumed by the abstract patterns that surround him. Personally, I kind of dig this, but it does threaten to overwhelm the figure. This stands in contrast to the portrait of John, where the ornament surrounding him is far more measured and contained. There's still a lot of it, including a massive, gorgeous halo around his head, and a frame of Celtic interlaces, some of which are the absolute finest in the book, but it's not all consuming as it is with the portrait of Matthew. Side note: the portrait of John looks almost exactly like my older brother Todd, which I happen to think is absolutely delightful. Despite having significantly less ornamentation than that of Matthew's portrait, the decorative frame surrounding John, as well as his halo, are often pointed to as some of the finest examples of Celtic interlace work in the Book of Kells. In particular, there is a layer of his halo that features interlacing so ridiculously complicated that I have absolutely no freaking clue how someone managed to paint this. And if you go looking for an answer to that question, you won't find one. To make this mystery even more frustrating, there are scholars and academics who have proven that there are certain details in the Book of Kells that you cannot properly see without a magnifying glass. However, at the time the book was presumably made, so around the year 800, magnifying glasses wouldn't be invented for another 400 years. Perhaps equally incredible is the degree of accuracy of some of these patterns, especially the interlacing designs that feature heavily in these portraits, but also throughout the book. In fact, scholars Sir M.D. Wyatt and his buddy, Professor John Obadiah Westwood, sat down with magnifying glasses, opened the book to an unspecified page, and started counting the interlaces, which is when lines overlap in something like a Celtic knot situation. In one square inch, they counted 158 crossovers, which is to say, the strings, if you will, that created the Celtic knot or Celtic interlace overlapped 158 times in one square inch. That's insane. Apart from the two evangelist portraits, there is a third portrait in the book that is slightly controversial. That slightly controversial illumination occurs on the verso of folio 32. It is on that page that you'll find a portrait of a man that follows the same schema of the other two portraits in the book. It is a very frontal depiction of a man with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a dark brown beard. Side note: a lot of the figures in the Book of Kells sports a rather odd combination of hair and beard colors. I'm not sure how a blonde dude has a chestnut brown beard, but there you go. The man is seated on a stool and enclosed in a decorative arch, which is in turn surrounded by a decorative frame, one filled with the typical Celtic interlaces, spirals, knots, you name it, it's got it. He is joined in his archway by a pair of peacocks who seem to be standing in potted plants. When you look at this illumination, be sure to look at the peacocks' feet, yes, their feet, which have become tangled up in the plants on which they are standing. But it's not just any old tangle. These plants wind up the peacocks' feet in Celtic knots. It's one of those small details that don't just make the Book of Kells so special, but make it so much fun to look at and revisit time and again. This portrait is usually called the portrait of Christ. For many years, though, it was referred to by a different name, the doubtful portrait. That is because it looks so much like the portraits of the gospel writers, two of which are missing. That has led some scholars, especially early ones like Edward Sullivan, to hypothesize that this portrait isn't Christ at all, but rather the evangelist portrait of either Mark or Luke. The idea being that this page had once fallen out of the book and on a subsequent rebinding got slotted in here instead of where it was supposed to go at the beginning of the appropriate gospel. The presence of the peacocks, though, calls that interpretation into question. Because if this were the evangelists Mark or Luke, you'd expect a lion or an ox to be there instead, not a peacock, which is a symbol of immortality and incorruptibility in Christian visual culture, one most often associated with one Mr. Jesus Christ. There's also an image of Jesus later in the book that looks exactly like the man depicted here, down to the mismatched hair and beard and the colors of his robes. That doesn't feel like a coincidence. In fact, it feels rather overt. Finally, this portrait appears after several pages dedicated to hashing out Christ's genealogy or bloodline, which seems as good a place as any to put a portrait of the dude himself. In addition to these three portraits, there are two more figural images in the book, both of which illustrate key points in the text: the arrest of Christ in the Gospel of Matthew, and the temptation of Christ in the Gospel of Luke. The inclusion of these two illuminations is fascinating, because it was rather rare for Gospel books around this time to have illuminations illustrating points in the text. In this regard, as in so many others, the Book of Kells stands apart. The first of these illustrative illuminations is the arrest of Christ in the Gospel of Matthew. If you haven't already noticed, you'll hear me referencing the Gospel of Matthew quite a bit throughout the episode. That is not only because the Gospel of Matthew retains the most surviving illuminations of any of the Gospels, but also that the illuminations appearing in the Gospel of Matthew are among the books most celebrated. Those illuminations include the arrest of Christ, which is an illumination that shows exactly what it sounds like. Jesus getting arrested. For those of you who are not so familiar with Christian stories, the final days of Jesus' life were marked by a series of increasingly and very highly traumatic events. Those events started with the Last Supper, which is when Christ confronted his apostles, saying, One of y'all betrayed me to the people who want me dead. And what you know it, one of them did, Judas. And it resulted in Christ's arrest. And let me tell you, things really snowballed from there. Of all of the events that led up to Christ's death, the Book of Kells gives visual form to just one scene: the Arrest of Christ, which is on the recto of Folio 114. Why that scene? Why not The Last Supper or something else? I don't know. I really don't, but that's the one we get, and what a scene it is. In this illumination, Christ is shown standing in an archway flanked by two male figures that I assume are the soldiers arresting him, given that they're grabbing him by the wrists. These three figures stand in a decorated archway that features a Latin phrase in the tympanum, which is a fancy way of saying the archy part of the archway. Those words read, quote, After reciting a hymn, they went to Mount Olivet. That phrase comes directly from Matthew chapter 26, verse 30, which talks about how, after the Last Supper, Jesus and his apostles sang a hymn and then walked outside to a garden on the Mount of Olives, where Jesus, who was a wanted man at this point, was eventually apprehended by the biblical version of the Popo. Christ is much larger than these two men. If we were to take this literally, there is absolutely no way that these dudes could have subdued a man the size of this particular Jesus. He would break them in half like toothpicks. But, but, the illuminator of this image is not suggesting that Jesus was part giant. Instead, he was using hieratic scale, with hieratic relating to the word hierarchy. Hieratic scale says a big screw you to visual perspective, instead operating under the rule that the bigger the figure, the more important he or she is. So Christ's hulking form is not a testament to him being ginormous, but rather ginormously important. This illumination is somewhat unnerving in its symmetry, particularly the figure of Christ. You could literally fold him in half, and his right and left side would match up perfectly, including his super weird gumby legs that quite frankly make me uncomfortable. The figure of Christ here greatly resembles the one featured in the Doubtful Portrait, aka the Portrait of Christ, in that he has massive blue eyes, very strong black eyebrows, a red beard, and a blonde helmet of hair. Speaking of mismatched hair, his jailers, who are exact replicas of one another, again, very symmetrical, they are redheads sporting red mustaches and black beards, which I also find deeply upsetting. The hair not matching the beard is one thing, but the beard hair not matching the mustache hair is on a whole nother level. As a matter of fact, I'm gonna say it. I'm just gonna say it. Of all of the mysteries of the Book of Kells, this is the one that I would personally choose to have solved. Yes, I would be that person if an Irish genie appeared and was like, Lindsay, what is the one thing you want to know about the Book of Kells? I would not ask when it was made, I would not ask where it was made, I wouldn't even ask about the Madonna's pendulous breasts. Though that would be a close second. Hello, sir. Have you ever seen a human woman? No, I would ask none of that. Instead, I want to know why in the heck don't the hair colors match? It's infuriating. These jailers are also depicted in a way that makes me think that the monks who made this book were being a little racist, though possibly without ever actually having seen someone from the Middle East. That's the vibe I get here. Yet another instance of never saw one, gonna paint it anyway. The last of the figural illuminations in the Book of Kells appears on the verso of Folio 214, which shows the third temptation of Christ by the devil. The story goes a little something like this. Now that's obviously not a direct quote, it is a paraphrase. But the idea was that if Jesus really was the Son of God, he could launch himself off of a temple and God would save him. Now we never find out if this really would have happened because Jesus was like, nice try, Lucifer, I'm not gonna do that, and how dare you ask my dad to prove himself, shame on you, sir. And the devil just like went away. It is only after knowing that story that this illumination makes any sense at all. But the people engaging with the Book of Kells would have known these kinds of stories backwards and forwards. Also, the illumination appears close to where that happens in the text, so you know, not not too much of a struggle. However, contemporary viewers who do not read Latin might be a whole lot confused. As with just about every illumination in the Book of Kells, this one has a lovely decorative frame. While there is a lot going on in this frame, the central image shows Christ's upper body emerging from some kind of structure, which is clearly meant to be the temple. That temple looks absolutely nothing like the ones that one might anticipate seeing in Jerusalem, but it does resemble the churches built in places like Scotland and Ireland during the Middle Ages. Typically, with other known instances of this scene, Christ is usually standing on top of the temple as you would expect someone to stand on top of the temple, not emerging from it. Here though, you once again get hieratic scale, so Christ looks about the size of the temple as he emerges from the top of it. In fact, the way that Christ's body emerges from the temple makes it look a lot like he's jumping out of a cake. Nope, just getting tempted by the devil. Two angels sit overhead watching this all go down, while crowds of onlookers occupy the left and lower margins. While the faces included in those crowds are rudimentary, there is a considerable amount of variety there in their faces, which I found quite interesting, though all of them do seem to be white. Then on the right hand side you've got the devil, and I want to quote Roger Staley's description of the devil, which is wonderful. He says it's quote, an emaciated elf with black wings, end quote. It's a good description. He's also about one-fifth the size of Christ. Hieratic scale for the win. This illumination was probably done by the same person who did the Madonna in Child image that I love so much and speak so highly of pendulous breasts. The decorative frame, like every other non-figural thing in the Book of Kells, is very dope. But the figures, mmm, leave something to be desired. The reason that I bring up this illumination is not for its artistic prowess, though I'll let you decide that yourself. This illumination, though, is particularly interesting because the devil figure, the demonic black elf, was at some point stabbed several times. Someone literally took a sharp object and Stabbed the figure of the devil. Roger Staley has argued that this act of stabbing the devil was something akin to an exorcism, which was, according to Staley, a pretty common thing in early Christian Ireland. Exorcist was even one of the seven ranks to which a clergyman or monk or priest could aspire to. It seems that stabbing this devil was a means of releasing his presence, exorcising it from the book, which I find fascinating. I wonder if it worked. While the devil hangs out on this folio, the Book of Kells's most famous illuminations are nothing shorts of angelic. Those can be found on folios 33 and 34, which are known as the Carpet Page, 33, and the Cairo Page, 34. There are also similar, very beautiful illuminations like these throughout the book, though these are the two that are essentially the poster children for the Book of Kells. They literally appear on posters. Both folios 33 and 34 are one-sided. There's nothing on the versos. Ergo, therefore, the Illuminator did not exchange these folios with a scribe. They were entirely the province of the Illuminator, who probably worked on each one of these for literally months. And believe me, the effort really shows. Of all of the artworks that I have had to describe on this podcast, I think describing these two pages in the Book of Kells, and particularly the carpet page, are the most difficult tasks I've had to date. And I know for certain that I cannot do them justice. It's pages like these ones that remind us of the nickname that Francois Henry gave to one of the illuminators, the goldsmith. Someone who takes the finest threads of gold and silver and weaves them together in glistening webs. First, the carpet page. Weird name, I know, but the term carpet page is not exclusive to the Book of Kells. It is very much a thing in medieval illuminated manuscripts. The term carpet page was coined after people started comparing the designs of these pages with those of prayer rugs or prayer mats used by both Muslims and Eastern Orthodox Christians for prayer rituals. Think Persian rug. That's the sheer level of dazzling intricacy on display here. It is lavish, it is OTT over the top, and it is beautiful. For the carpet page, picture a rectangular border. In the center of that border, even overlapping it to some extent, are a series of circles that together form a double-armed Christian cross. So a traditional Christian cross is a long vertical with one short horizontal. This is one vertical with two short horizontals. There is then a medallion or a circle on the end of each one of those lines, as well as where the lines cross, meaning that there's four medallions going vertically, so one medallion, a little channel, another medallion, a little channel, another medallion, a little channel, and then another medallion. And the two middle medallions each have a little channel on either side of them horizontally that each connect to another medallion. It is because of this constellation of medallions that the carpet page in the Book of Kells is sometimes referred to as an eight-circle cross. Creative. Why eight? The number eight is sacred in church numerology, as Jesus was resurrected on the eighth day of Holy Week. So from Last Supper to Resurrection took eight days. We can assume that that is the symbolism at play here, but the truth is, like with so many other things in the Book of Kells, we just don't know. But it's hard to even think about symbolism when confronted by a page with this amount of detail. The spaces created within and around all of these shapes are absolutely filled to bursting with interlacing, knots, scroll work, smaller medallions, even smaller medallions inside of those medallions, you name it, it's got it, plus about a thousand other things. The details just keep going and going and going, to the point where it makes you almost feel a little bit sick. That's not something that you would usually say about an object this incredible, but I want to read yet another quote from Christopher de Hamel's book, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, which echoes my thoughts in a much more eloquent way. De Hamel writes, quote, My private impression from having pages of the Book of Kells turned before my eyes, one after the other throughout the day, is that the picture pages interrupt the text and are hard to enjoy, despite all of their fame. I'm not even sure that we can regard them as beautiful. They are spectacularly important in the history of arts, and their commercial value is almost beyond estimation, but they are confusing and difficult to decipher. Human forms are primitive, even crude. There is too much decoration. The eye has nowhere to settle. End quote. Because when you turn the carpet page, bam, there's folio 34, where the party just keeps going on what is probably the most famous page in the book, which is known as the Cairo page. To be clear, Cairo refers not to the city in Egypt, but the Greek letters of Chai, which looks like an X, and Rho, which looks like a P. Those are the first two letters in the Greek word of Christos or Christ, which over time became an abbreviation for the word itself and got stuck on just about everything. If you keep your eye out in a church, you will inevitably see some kind of combination of X and P just hanging around. If someone's feeling a little spicy, they might even extend that to three letters by including the Greek letter iota, which looks like an I. And let me tell you, the illuminator of this page was feeling extra spicy. He took that monogram of Chi, Rho, and Iota, X, P, and I, and turns them into a veritable buffet of detail, detail, and more detail. Apart from maybe the carpet page, this is the most intricate page in the entire book. And when I say intricate, I mean intricate. I know that word is starting to lose meaning because I've used it so many damn times, but there's only so many words I can use to impress upon you just how insane this is. I'll try to find them anyway. If I absolutely had to explain the Cairo page to someone who had never seen it, I would describe it thusly. It is as if the inner workings of an old clock had a baby with a treasure chest full of jewels. The resulting old clock treasure baby goes on to mate with an expensive fabric shop, and their offspring eventually has an affair with the alphabet. That love child would be the Cairo page. I know that is an insane description, but it's the most accurate one that I can think of, and now I kind of want to go write Book of Kells fanfiction. But I won't because that would be just too sad. The X or Kai is really the star of the show and dominates about two-thirds of the page. When you first look at it, you might even think that it's a P because of the way that the arms swirl, but it is in fact an X, or, you know, Kai. Roe and Iota, P and I, can be spotted in the lower left-hand corner. Though I wouldn't blame you if you missed them, because there is just so much freaking stuff happening here. I keep thinking that if Van Gogh ever saw the Book of Kels, his mind would just explode. In the book Talking of Joyce, Italian authors Umberto Echo and Liberato Santoro Brienza referred to the Book of Kels as, quote, the product of a cold-blooded hallucination. I'm not even sure what that means exactly, but I would bet my bottom dollar that good old Umberto and Liberato probably had these two pages in mind when they made that claim. The Cairo page appears right before Matthew chapter 1, verse 18, which is the beginning of the story of Christ's miraculous conception and birth. The gist is that this page celebrates the moment where Christ is divinely conceived. As they say in Catholicism, it's the word made flesh. Ironically, the Illuminator did this not through a figural representation, but through abstract designs and patterns, ones that would rival the work of even the most talented Celtic goldsmiths. For all the pomp and circumstance of this moment, what I appreciate most about the Cairo page is that the illuminator still had a sense of, if not humor, then whimsy when making this image. Unlike the carpet page, which is glorious, but you know, really means business, the Cairo page is filled with tiny, delightful details. The one that tickles my soul the most is located in a small space near the bottom of the page. So if you're looking at an image of the Cairo page, you'll see that it has some circles. Find the one at the very bottom of the page, and right above it, you'll see a kind of cavity. That space contains a handful of little creatures. Two of them, I believe, are cats, but look a lot like rabid armadillos, who are carrying mice on their backs. Those two bracket another delightful little duo of two mice who are nibbling on a communion wafer, which is so naughty, sassy boys. Is there some kind of symbolism in this? Or did the Abbey of Iona just have a mice problem? Probably both, but we'll never know, and that's okay, because even the most famous book in the world is entitled to its secrets. If you wanted to play an I Spy game with the Cairo page, you can also keep a lookout for a little otter that has a fish in his little paws, as well as a couple of moths. Like I said, D light full. There are several other monogram pages in the book that compete with the Cairo page and the carpet page for detail dominance. They don't win, but they do compete. You can page through those in the digital version of the online book. It's a lot of the same things I've been talking about repackaged into new and different spectacles. But to finish, I also want to give credit to the quieter moments in the book, the ones that provide tiny bursts of joy and wonder between these awe-inspiring masterpieces. I have paged through every single one of the Book of Kell's pages. Again, digitally, but still I've done it. There is something to find on every single page in this book. Capital letters that looked like they're studded with precious stones, simple flowers drawn with a fined nibbed quill, swirling shapes rendered in red, a capital G whose minute decoration drops like a waterfall onto the letters below. Letters whose final swoosh turns into a small vine of grapes. But my favorite thing to look for as I turn the pages are the animals and creatures that inhabit this text: lions and doves, stags and snakes, peacocks and wolves, fish and horses, even lizards and moths. You can find these and other creatures gambling through the text, curled into the margins, even wrapping themselves around capital letters. Every time I find a new one, it's like a little visual treat. While I'm sure that these animals did have some kind of significance, if not to the text, then to the person who drew them, I'm not so concerned with that symbolism. After all, not everything needs an explanation. Sometimes you can just let something be delightful. If it brings joy to the eye as well as to the heart, then for me that's explanation well enough. Today, the Book of Kells is split into four volumes, at least one of which is always on display in a special exhibition room in the old library of Trinity College, Dublin. Don't worry if you get lost on your way to Trinity College. There are signs throughout the city that point you not in the direction of the college, though those also exist, but to the Book of Kells itself, which has become a landmark, a monument, an icon of Ireland. Seeing the book will cost you a pretty penny. Tickets currently cost about 18.50. While that does strike me as very pricey, particularly given that you can only ever see one or two pages at a time, I promise you that it's worth every single penny. And if that 1850 euro price tag has you sweating a little, maybe drink a Guinness first. And after. Sluncha, my friends. That is all I have for you today on the Book of Kells Part 2, cover to cover and page to page. I will put all kinds of images on the podcast's website along with a list of the sources I used to write today's episode, including some older volumes that you can find online. I consulted various books by Bernard Meehan, who was formerly the keeper of manuscripts at Trinity College, including The Book of Kells in Illustrated Introduction, as well as the 2012 volume simply entitled The Book of Kells. As you could probably tell by me quoting him constantly throughout the episode, I also enjoyed various texts by Christopher de Hommel, including his essay about the Book of Kells in Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts. His book, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, is also very good. I also found the edited volume by Felicity O'Mahony, the Book of Kells, Proceedings of a Conference, to be very helpful. Additionally, I consulted texts by Francois Henry, George Henderson, Peter Fox, Edward Sullivan, and many others. You will find all of that and so much more on the podcast's website, stuffaboutthingspodcast.com. As for Gus Corner, I am actually home right now in the presence of the Princely Pooch himself. He is doing awesome. He's super cute, even if he is slightly annoying sometimes. He has grown so accustomed to a second short walk in the afternoons that I cannot go downstairs between the hours of 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. without being absolutely harassed and barked at until I give in. And I do always give in. As for me, I will be back in a couple of weeks with at least one additional mini sode related to the whole manuscript thing. I'm hoping for two, but let's now just focus on the one. I'm also hard at work on another full-length episode. I will aim to have that up as soon as I possibly can. It will probably take at least four to six weeks. In the meantime, I do love hearing from listeners, so please feel free to reach out via the podcast's website or the podcast's email. Stuffaboutthingspodcast at gmail.com. I do always respond, though sometimes it does take me a couple of weeks. If you are enjoying the podcast, I would also very much appreciate it if you left it a rating or even a review if your preferred podcast platform allows you to do so, especially if you listen on iTunes. Leaving reviews not only helps more people find the show, it also lets me know that I'm doing a good job. I earn absolutely nothing from this. I actually pay to do this, so I always appreciate it when people throw me that small bone. Please and thank you. The usual thanks go out to hooksounds.com and freemusicarchive.org for the royalty-free music that you hear at the beginning and the end of the podcast. The first song you hear is a version of Box Brandenburg Concerto number four by Kevin McLeod, while the second, Jaunt Deer tune is called Success Dreams. That is it for me today. But before you go, before you go, don't forget to look at something beautiful today. The pendulosity is astounding. Those babies be swinging.